C4T #4

For my C4T assignment, I was instructed to browse over Larry Ferlazzo's blog page at edublogs. Larry is a high school advanced English teacher at Sacromento, California in a school named Luther Burbank High. He had many interesting post on his blog page that I found quite intriguing. The first post that I decided to comment on was titled Research Studies of The Week and included many different links to sites Larry found beneficial enough to include on his own site. The links Larry included discussed ways that students should focus on to conquer their goals. Larry summed the sites he had found up by talking about teaching students to map out their short and long term goals in order to successfully fulfill them. He tells of different studies that deal with sticking to certain goals and the best approaches to success. One point Larry made that really stuck out to me was that we have a much better chance of succeeding in our goals if we focus on fewer of them at a time. As I commented on this post of Larry's, it really inspired me to think of new ways to encourage my future students to achieve their goals. I feel it is part of a teacher’s responsibility to instill the proper techniques of achieving goals in the lives of their students. As Larry stated in his blog, I think teachers should have their students decide on their short or long term goals and create a plan to work toward those goals. By teaching students at a young age how to manage their lives in order to meet their potential goals, we as teachers can instill better structure and guidance in our students. I love how Larry ended his post by stating that setting short term goals in order to achieve long term goals lead to a higher chance of success!

The second blog post of Larry Ferlazzo's that I chose to comment on was titled A Round Up of Recent Good Posts on Educational Policy. This posts also contained many separate posts that Larry had recently found in which he felt he should spread to others. He included a video link in this post that illustrated the U.S students vs the world in student performance. I found the video quite interesting in that it uplifted our students in the U.S and reminded me that the students here are not as bad as we all make them out to be. There was also a link included to a site detailing computers grading essays and the fact that it may be the faster way to grade but not the most effective way. In Larry's post he included a site that stated the top ten list of public education success. I thought it was nice of Larry to include this last link in his blog post because there is so much of an emphasis put on the negative aspects in public schools and not enough on the positive. This list Larry posted included the accomplishments of public schools and allowed there to become a "pat on the back" for public education. I really enjoyed having the opportunity to surf Larry Ferlazzo's blog page!